eCommerce – A Plan
Coming up with an ecommerce web site is like building a house – design and budget would like to be agreed before the decoration.
AN AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION MUST BE DRAWN UP AS THE FIRST STAGE BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE IS DONE – ANY OTHER APPROACH WILL ONLY LEAD TO CONFUSION AND WORSE.
Once an AGREED REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION has been agreed then solutions need to be evaluated and costed against that specification are:
– Project management
– Hardware
– Net style and software
– Site promoting
– Project management:
All aspects of the project want to be managed. Decide who’s going to do it and properly set up the wants, activities, outcomes, milestones and timings.
Hardware:
Your choices here are a managed service or your own server. The protection and disaster recovery aspect that is achieved by hosting with a significant supplier is very important. Only go with your own server if you’ve got the expertise and facilities.
Design and Software:
Site design
Develop site templates and take a look at them with real people. They need to be simple to use and navigate. Do not let “style” drive the site; let easy use and sales drive the “style”. Think how the customer thinks.
Software
A minimum of 5 solutions would like to be considered.
– Updating
– Searching cart
– Forum
– Email
– Statistics
Updating
There are 2 realistic routes here. Either an online or an offline, PC based content management system (CMS). The web CMS can be either an Open Source CMS (Open Supply suggests that any application that has been created offered, usually free, to developers to read and modify freely. Examples of Open Source applications are MySQL and PHP) or commercial.
There are execs and cons to each routes. An online system is obtainable to anyone with relevant security clearance anywhere any time. A PC based mostly system is, obviously, restricted to the PCs running the licenses. An example of a PC based mostly system is Macromedia Contribute that integrates with Dreamweaver. There are a whole vary of online Business and Open Source choices like SuiteWise™, Drupal, Joomla, and Website Baker etc. However, even this can be difficult by the very fact that some of the shopping cart solutions additionally contain CMS that may be sufficient for several firms’ requirements.
Looking cart and CRM
There also are 2 realistic routes for the looking cart – Open Supply or commercial.
There are excellent Open Supply searching carts such as OSCommerce and Zen, however conjointly glorious industrial solutions like Actinic and Client Focus Quick Order Portal (which comes with a whole CMS).
There are more factors to consider with the shopping cart:
– Does it have its own or will it simply integrate together with your exiting stock control systems?
– Will it integrate simply with accounting systems (e.g. Sage, QuickBooks)?
– Will it have or integrate easily with Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems which will be proposed in future?
Forum
Many CMS have sensible integrated forums however if they are doing not our recommendation would be to use a good Open Source package such as PunBB or phpBB. They are free, robust and simple to integrate and customise into any site.
Most CMS, searching carts and forums have email solutions. But, some solutions are terribly basic. If the chosen looking cart solution that best meets the ecommerce and alternative requirements does not have a good integrated email answer and if the identical be true of the CMS and forum solutions then stand alone Open Source applications like PHPlist are one various solution and the other is an online solution like Constant Contact or many others.
Statistics
This is often arguably the foremost necessary half of the package. If you are doing not grasp how guests to your website and in the look are behaving, what turns them on and what turns them off then it is so much, far tougher to improve sales and web site profitability. Commercial applications such as WebTrends and ClickTracks would like to be evaluated for best fit.
SITE MARKETING
There are four major areas to consider here.
– Offline marketing – e.g. in-store. What works most value effectively to drive traffic and orders via the net from non-net activities.
– Site optimisation – how to make certain technical structure, copy, content, back-links and a vary of other factors are initially and stay optimised thus that as many high search engine placements on relevant searches are obtained.
– Pay per click and alternative online marketing – how to get traffic from advertising against key words and phrases used in search engines and from adverts on different sites.
– Email – the way to grow the email list and use it to grow profitable sales.
In summary:
– Manage the project
– Suppose how the client thinks
– Get wonderful software to make finding product and worth easy
– Make terms clear and payment easy
– Guarantee you’re in stock and and have achievable delivery timescales
– Make positive you have got a sensible CRM system and clear communications – mail, phone, emai
– Market the location appropriately
– Recognize what’s occurring – use your stats to test, track and try
Value ………… well how long could be a pice of string, however you may be up and running for a lot but the value of new premises!!!
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